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Then your hose should be ungarter'd, your bonnet unbanded, your sleeve unbutton'd, your shoe untied, and every thing about you demonstrating a careless desolation. - As You Like It (III.2) A collection of butotns made from iron, lead, leather, and other materials. These were excavated from Jamestown, Virginia, in the United States, and are listed as dating from the 17th to the 20th centuries. Source Buttons on Clothing Shakespeare writes about crystal buttons in Henry IV Part 1 and in Comedy of Errors, uses the expression “One whose hard heart is button'd up with steel;” Now, of course, your heart being buttoned up with steel might be a metaphor, but it does make us wonder about what buttons were made of for Shakespeare’s lifetime. Tammie shares that there were a variety of materials used to make buttons, which were divided up, as you might expect, by class. Actually the first part of this the crystal buttons—there are instances of crystal buttons Janet Arnold, Lost on her majesties back, entry about a a crystl button Item 112, item broken from her majesty, one button of crystal or galss. She lost it on 12 april 1570. Tammie Dupuis, Ep 322 of That Shakespeare Life A cast button with a long, rounded, pierced shank. The face has a deeply incised lattice pattern formed of five horizontal and five vertical lines. | dated between 1600-1700 | Photographer Surrey County Council, David Williams, 2004-06-29 12:06:51 | Attribution: The Portable Antiquities Scheme/ The Trustees of the British Museum | The Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) is a voluntary programme run by the United Kingdom government to record the increasing numbers of small finds of archaeological interest found by members of the public. The scheme started in 1997 and now covers most of England and Wales | This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. | Source | Accessed April 2, 2024 In a Spanish to English dictionary dating to 1599, the word "button" is listed as being defined with the use of a "pair of foils" which are rapier swords. Tammie points out that once we know this potential definition, the reference to being "button'd up with steel" that we see in Comedy of Errors is most likely a reference to two foils fighting. One whose hard heart is button'd up with steel... ~ Comedy of Errors (IV.2) Leather and silk British Doublet, dated 1645, showing buttons covered in silk. | Purchase, Irene Lewisohn Bequest, 1982 | Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art | Public Domain | Source The Shape of Buttons Conical shaped button dating to the 17th century. This button is conical with a flat back with two blow-holes in the back. The shank has a D-shaped cross-section and appears to be a separate element. | Greater London Authority | The Portable Antiquities Scheme/ The Trustees of the British Museum | This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. | Source As with modern day fashion, there are variations in...
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